Creative Brief: Harvust
Participants
Riley Clubb, James Christopher Hall, and David Mumm.
September 28 and 29, 2020
Overview
What would you like us to do for you? What is the purpose and scope of the project (heighten credibility, expand services, sell 2000 widgets, etc.)?
We need to articulate what we do in a unified way. We must condense and simplify the language we use to talk about the features of our software. Today, our business offers three functions that farmers need to interact with farmworkers. Our software facilitates:
Onboarding: Hiring and collection of associated data.
Safety training: Training and documentation of training.
Communications: Communicate management objectives and offer workers a vehicle for anonymous feedback.
In the future, we may add more features as we see demand. Our clients would benefit from timekeeping and payroll functions. We have aspirations to add more features, but we are not there yet.
We often think about the farmworker's journey, the interaction they have with their employer. A farmworker hears about the available job; they meet the employer and make an agreement. Then comes hiring paperwork, orientation, and they are ready to work. Now they are on the job. They must get the training needed to keep them safe. They need to understand management objectives, keep track of work, track bins picked, and submit a payment request. Then, the worker leaves employment, and the cycle starts again.
We have challenges we face is selling our tools as ONE THING. We must more clearly communicate our offering to drive sales. We assist with onboarding, safety, and communication. It's challenging to find a way to communicate our offering as just ONE THING.
Often farms employ many decision-makers. One person runs onboarding, and another person manages safety training. A third person runs management communications. So, we find ourselves in a position to sell ONE product to THREE managers. It's often hard to reach all three.
We want to develop a series of ads and communications that support the growth of our software. We need to reach receptive people and maintain our good reputation as we communicate with them. We don't want to send cold emails that might be perceived as spam. We must reach people in a real way. We must speak to their values, address their concern, and meet their needs.
What are their concerns? They would like to add speed and organization to their onboarding, training, and communication practices. A typical customer comment is, "Havvust is fast and organized."
Customers are also concerned with liability, risk, and safety. And, our customers are concerned about the big disorganized jumble on their desk. Another common customer comment is, "HR is disorganized, I can't find anything, and I don't know what's going on."
We build tools that help workers get ready to work, train them for safe work, and keep them productive in the field. James says: "We get people ready to work and keep them ready to work."
Projects include
We need to focus our website on generating leads: Our website is currently being updated. It could use an improved marketing funnel to convert visitors to leads. Now, we get about 35 leads annually. We do have some good testimonial videos on our site. Our website should be our "brochure" with key selling points and conversion on the home page. We must show clients what they want to see and how we can solve their problems.
We must create connections to new customers: We need a way to connect with farmers and those who influence purchasing decisions. We were doing conferences last year, but now everything is digital. Tradeshows are gone. Zoom rooms are hard to get folks to join. We don't have a way to reach farmers and staff. We have 40 Linked-In followers. We have some testimonial videos. We have 16 Facebook followers. Sometimes we get 2,000 views on Facebook, but they don't seem to drive sales. We have some lighthouse influencer customers. How do we get them to share our stuff? We considered direct mail and ads in Good Fruit Grower or other agriculture-focused publications. We do have a map of all farmers in Washington state with their employee numbers. We can use this map to create a contact list. Since our competition is focused on farms with more than 500 employees, we have a sweet spot with farms with 50 to 500 employees.
We must create an organized approach to marketing: We need to create a series of steps to follow from the first client contact to signing the contract for services. We already know that product demos are a powerful way to convince clients. We offer a free trial account, and then we transition that account to a paid account.
We need to create a more positive customer experience: Our most important customers are our present customers. We must communicate well with them and offer them continued value. Our current customers can often be our best link to new customers. We currently have no standard customer experience other than a monthly newsletter.
We must learn more about what triggers a farm to seek a service like ours: What is the entry point? What is the first indication of need?
Creative Considerations
What limitations or constraints do you have (budget, schedule, size, paper, etc.)? What elements or colors or other personal preferences must be represented in this project? Where will additional materials that we do not create come from? (writing/photography/illustration etc.)
We like our vibe. Yes, we look like a typical tech startup. But tech startup is not an everyday look in agriculture. Sure, we like green, but it needs to be an unusual green. We are not John Deere. We're not macho. We are not metallic. We like to stand out. We like to be different.
We need to be real and professional. We want the enterprise accounts. BUT we also wish to serve small accounts. Many farmers think that if the big farms are using a product, then it is the right product. We've heard, "If Zirkle is using it, it's good enough." It's important to show our potential clients that we have big farms using our software.
Agricultural ads set a very low bar. Everything we've seen looks years behind and is often amateurish. We have seen some fairly good ads for Fieldclock.
Simplicity is central to who we are. One customer recently said, "This is some of the most well designed simple, beautiful software that we have seen in ag."
We work with a designer. His name is Taso, and he's from Boston. See his work at taso.design. He is working on the design of the new site. He has a degree in design from Northeastern and has worked for Quantopian and Crayon.co.
Traditionally, ag marketing has been centered on trade shows with booths and hardware you can touch. The environment in 2020 has changed all that, and it’s harder to reach new customers than ever. Our customers are still reading trade mags and picking up their mail. However, innovation will be required to reach them.
Product Description
What are the products or services your business provides? What is the product or service that you want to promote? What are its features? How much does it cost? What is it made of and how is it used? What makes it different, unusual, or unique?
We offer fast and straightforward HR software for farms. Our software helps farms hire, train, and communicate with their workers.
We offer one product that does three things, not three products.
We believe that farmworkers can do things independently on their own device. We believe that farmworkers can be trusted to do complex high fidelity tasks. We believe that farmworkers can generate more value for the farm.
We compete on quality. Cost is not our primary concern.
We're different from our primary competition Ganaz. Although we don't know much about them, we know that Ganaz is a tool for farmers, but farmworkers are NOT users. Employees in the Ganaz system are objects and lists of tasks for the farm to complete. Ganaz offers no trainings on a farmworker's device. Farmworkers do not have their own Gamaz account. Plus, Ganaz is more expensive at $5,000 upfront for 500 employees. We like our model better because farmworkers have accounts, and that brings about more interactions and more value for farms.
What does it cost:
Onboarding. $10 per hire.
Training: $2 per employee per month.
Communication: $1 per employee per month. That includes unlimited translation, audio conversion, and maps.
It's important to note that audio translations are a big deal. Now, all farmworkers can access content even if they are illiterate.
Distributed content is also a big deal. All content is delivered to every worker, and they take care of it with NO MEETINGS. Especially in the time of COVID, this is a safer and more effective option. If people can get degrees online, we can teach people how to wash their hands online.
Harvust gives supervisors more time to supervise. We create super-supervisors who communicate better and assign tasks faster.
We solve HR problems, and we safety provide content. We make communication easy. We take care of these steps so you can take care of your business.
Our goal is to give our clients their weekends back.
Harvust is simple, fast HR software. Harvust gets farmworkers ready to work and keeps them working.
Competition
What makes your business special among similar businesses? What’s your value proposition? Who is your present competition? Who would you like to be competing with? What similar products or services are currently available and how good are they?
Our primary completion is the status quo. Many farms are still doing things the old broken way on paper and by phone. From what we can tell, only two to five percent of farms are using technology for onboarding, training, and communication. Farms are conservative and slow to adopt new technology. Small farms are especially slow to change because they can hire someone to do the software’s functions and maybe handle other duties in addition to HR.
Our key software competition is Ganaz.com. They also offer tools for onboarding, training, communication, and feedback. In essence, they make the same tools we do. And, they have millions of dollars in funding.
When farms to adopt new technology, they often choose to add one feature per year. We've heard farmers say, "we're doing Fleldclock.com this year." In essence, we compete with any other farm software, even if that software offers very different features from our offering.
Target Audience & Market Realities
Who is your current primary audience (gender, age, socioeconomics, employment, geographics)? How much do they know about the product? What are their attitudes toward products or businesses like yours? What motivates them? Who do you want your audience to be?
Our target customer is small businesses with more than 50 employees. Often these farms have no HR pro, just a general manager. At around 100 employees, farms will employ an HR pro. At 1,000 employees, a farm will have a structured office, but the methods they use often expand small ways of doing things. Instead of one HR pro like they had with 100 employees, they now have ten HR pros who each take care of 100 employees. When a farm has many people with the same function, they are often uncoordinated and would benefit from a sophisticated system, like Harvust. Cost and pain also scale when you expand a small scale system to a big operation. Sadly, there are no efficiencies of scale for these farms. We can help!
Even at a tiny scale with just a few employees, most folks have payroll and time tracking software. Payroll software is first. It's important to pay workers fairly. Good payroll software can save a lawsuit. After payroll software, farms seek time tracking software.
After payroll and time tracking software is in place, farm managers look for software like Harvust to assist them with onboarding, safety, or communications. Most of our customers are early adopters.
All farms say that they are a traditional family farm.
We find that many of the decision-makers that have chosen Harvust so far are women under 40. A typical decision-making unit is more than one person. For example, Estella is the general manager of Recusci Winery. She is the chief decision-maker. What she says goes. Below her are Ariana and Joselyn, who are in charge of safety training and payroll systems. Harvust has to work for Ariana and Joselyn if it is to work for Estella.
Our customer is an agricultural business with 50 or more employees and often thousands of employees. They need help with onboarding, training, and communication. They typically have more than one person who is responsible for these tasks. HR, safety, and communications is commonly the task of the foreman or supervisor. On smaller farms, all three tasks can be managed by just one person.
We have success when the top decision-maker is making contact with us or attends our first demos. If an implementer finds us and brings our product to management, we have less success. If a directive comes from above, it's easy.
Many in our customer base are conservative. The Farm Bureau is a significant conservative-leaning lobbying organization. Farmers seem to love to resent the government.
What do our customers want?
Control and control of time. We often hear, "We are too busy right now." Farming is always busy because of the constant maintenance, intensity of harvest, and weather issues. You can't miss your deadlines. You have to pick the cherries when ripe. Onboarding has to move quickly. With Harvust, a farmworker can have all the hiring paperwork done before they arrive at the farm. Time really is a focus of what we can offer farmers. Harvust not only saves the farmer time, but it saves his supervisors time (he's paying those folks). It even saves time for farmworkers.
Farmers want to make money and provide for their families.
Farmers want to keep the family land and keep the multi-generation farm alive.
Our current clients are mostly in Washington State. Our next target is Oregon, California, and Arizona. Most of the agricultural labor in the United States is on the West Coast and in Florida.
User Benefits
How will the user be better off using your product or service? Will he or she save time, effort, or money? If so, how much? How important is this product to the consumer? Are there tradeoffs (higher quality, but higher price)?
We help you keep your workman's comps rates low. Good safety training often saves your business money.
We protect you from compliance risk. If a farm has inadequate safety records, they may get a $10,000 fine. It's hard to quantify this benefit because we can't know how often the state will audit a given farm. ICE audits can be $1,000 per mistake. The lurking fear of non-compliance is a real pain that growers will eventually feel.
We save you time. Our software speeds the required processes.
Onboarding: We help you get all the required forms and keep your records organized. Nobody wants to continue to do onboarding with two computers and a long, long line.
Safety Training: There is no need to call a time-wasting meeting and spend time reading the paper to the team. Plus, there's no need for handouts. Training that used to take an hour now takes five minutes. We distribute trainings to all workers. The software tracks progress of all team members. Today, many farms fail to complete required trainings. Maybe 75% of the required training remains incomplete. We make sure training gets done.
Communications: It's easy to get management directives and other information to employees wherever they are. Harvust also collects feedback from the team. Workers are more engaged, connected, and effective. Good communication aids retention.
Translations are easy. Harvust does text and audio in English and text and audio in Spanish. All team members have access to all information, regardless of language or literacy.
Harvust is easy to implement and fast to learn. Customers learn it very quickly. “I can't imagine myself without Harvust. None of us want to go back to the old way. Harvust is a survival tool. We have to do things better to compete with the big farms. Harvust helps us be more competitive.”
Control is important. At the end of harvest, everything is wrapped up neatly with a bow on top. It could be fun to show your desk before and after Harvust. We help farmers keep everything neat and organized.
In short: We prepare people to work, keep them safe, and keep them prepared for work.
Note: It's hard to maintain a current and up to date roster of employees and their workspace for Harvust, payroll, and time-tracking software. Keeping the list correct is hard. Farms MUST do it for payroll and time tracking. But, they don't want to do it for Harvust as well. Syncing name, phone, employee id, crew number, and farm ID across platforms is difficult.
Most Important Point (MIP)
What are the top three (or more) ranked benefits of your product or service? If you could choose only one thing the audience remembers from your advertising, what would it be?
The old ways of farm onboarding, safety training, and communication are broken.
Harvust puts you in control. And, you feel in control.
Harvust is organized. And, you feel organized.
Harvust is accurate. And, you feel confident.
Harvust is fast. You will save time.
Harvust improves your communication and connection with employees.
Harvust improves farm safety and reduces your liability.
Harvust helps you conquer farm HR, improve safety, communicate quickly, and manage your farm faster.